Cereal Killer (19 page)

“Don’t you have some napkins or at least paper towels in that heap back there?” she said, nodding toward the landfill in his back seat and floorboard.

“What? And waste a bite of this heavenly stuff?” He closed his eyes in ecstasy as he polished off the last bit, and for a moment she thought he might actually lick the Tupperware clean. It wouldn’t be the first time. “Van,” he said, “you may have your limitations, but no matter what anybody says, you’re a damned good cook.”

“Gee, thanks... I guess.”

Savannah looked out the dirty window at an even dirtier neighborhood—if, indeed, this end of town could even be called a neighborhood. The object of their surveillance, Mr. Ronald Tumblety, lived in a rusty blue van parked behind an abandoned auto repair shop in San Carmelita’s “industrial” area.

Though on this particular block of Potter Street, it appeared there hadn’t been any bona fide industry in the past decade or more. Even the graffiti on the cement block walls was outdated, including some faded references to the Vietnam war and Watergate.

When Savannah and Dirk had arrived two hours ago, it hadn’t taken long for them to realize that Tumblety wasn’t living in the auto shop—the address he had given to the Department of Motor Vehicles. And a quick once-over of the property told them that his official domicile was the van with two flat tires and a broken windshield that was parked in the rear.

Apparently “Tom Peeping” didn’t pay much, and neither did stalking.

“How long are we going to wait for this guy?” she asked, getting more depressed by the moment.

Dirk set the empty container on the dash, sighed, and rubbed his belly contentedly. “Why? You in a rush to get back to your sister?”

Savannah glanced at her watch. “It’s after midnight. She’s probably composed herself by now.”

“I can’t believe she’d take some Internet romance that seriously.”

“Oh, you’d be surprised what Marietta, Queen of Drama, takes seriously. Especially when it comes to men.” Dirk snorted. “Not me, man. I stay a million miles away from broads like her. They’re way more trouble than they’re worth.”

“Got a lot of Marietta types after you, do you, Stud Muffin?”

“Naw. I see ’em comin’ and I head the other way.” Savannah pulled the collar of her jacket up around her neck and crossed her arms over her chest. “It’s chilly in here.”

“Ah, stop your complaining. Since when did you turn into a pansy on a stakeout?”

“Since I stopped getting paid for it.”

“So... bill that Leah Freed gal for your time here tonight. You’re working on the case, after all.”

“That’s true, but she thought our killer was going to be somebody in the modeling business, not some civilian nutjob.”

“Who cares who it is, as long as you catch him, right?”

“I guess. I—” Savannah caught a glimpse of movement in the Buick’s side mirror. “Hey, somebody’s pulling into the driveway over there.”

“An old El Camino?”

“Yep. And he’s getting out and walking up behind us,” she said. “He fits your DMV description.”

“Big, fat, and ugly?”

“Watch your terminology there, would you? Big, horizontally enhanced, and attractiveness-challenged.”

“Yeah, that’s better.”

They watched as a large, slovenly fellow in baggy sweats sauntered up the sidewalk beside the auto shop. “I do believe that’s our boy,” she said.

‘Yeah, let’s get him before he gets into that van. God knows what he’s got in there in the way of weapons.”

“Knives, guns... bubonic plague?”

“Exactly.”

They got out of the Buick, being cautious not to slam the doors and alert their mark. They caught up with him before he was even halfway to his van.

“Ronald Tumblety?” Dirk asked in his most officious cop voice.

He spun around, fists clenched at his sides. “Who wants to know?”

“The police,” Dirk replied. “Detective Coulter. I need to ask you a couple of questions.”

“I got nothing to say to you people.” Turning his back to them, Tumblety headed for his van at double time.

Dirk caught him in three steps, grabbing a handful of his sweatshirt. Savannah pulled his right hand behind his back and held it there.

“Now why be so rude?” she said. “We’re really nice people when you get to know us.”

Dirk twisted his left hand behind his back and quickly cuffed him.

“Well,” Savannah added as Dirk tightened the manacles,
“I’m
nice. This guy’s not all that nice—especially to perverts who flash their pee-pees at little girls. He’s been known to be downright cranky with them.”

“I don’t flash children!” Tumblety exclaimed. And even by the dim light of a nearby street lamp, Savannah could see his pudgy face flush with indignation.

She couldn’t help chuckling. It always amused and amazed her that even society’s more distasteful citizens had their standards... and were frequently indignant when defending them.

“No, you’re a real stand-up guy,” Dirk said as he turned him around to face him. “We know all about you, Ronald. That’s why we’re here.”

“Why?” he said. “Did some woman accuse me of calling her late at night? Did she say I was hanging around outside her house? ’Cause if she did, she’s lying! I went for counseling, and I don’t do that stuff anymore.”

Dirk glanced over at Savannah, who simply twitched one eyebrow.

“She’s lying, huh?” Dirk said. “I don’t think so. I think you’ve been calling her and following her, and we both know that’s not all you did.”

Tumblety’s eyes widened, and he began to shiver. His teeth even started to chatter.

Savannah tried not to get excited, but this was a better reaction than she had frequently seen in coldblooded killers, twenty seconds before they confessed.

“I didn’t... didn’t do nothin’, I... I told you,” he said.

Dirk shoved his face closer to the guy’s until they were practically nose to nose. “Well, guess what... we know exactly what you did to her. We’ve got witnesses who saw you there.”

“No, you don’t! There wasn’t nobody th—er, that is, didn’t nobody see nothing, ’cause there wasn’t nothing to see. I didn’t do it.”

“I think you’d better come along with me, Mr. Tumblety,” Dirk said, pulling him down the driveway toward the Buick. “We’ll go to the station house and you can tell me in great detail all about what you didn’t do that nobody saw you do.”

“Huh?”

Tumblety looked genuinely confused. And Savannah silently thanked the good God above that so many criminals were basically stupid.

It made her life... and Dirk’s... so much simpler.

Fifteen minutes later, Savannah and Dirk arrived at the police station with Ronald Tumblety sitting in the back seat of Dirk’s Buick amid the assorted Dirk junk.

They pulled him out of the car and took him through the rear entrance. Once inside the brightly lit hallway, Savannah got her first look at their latest suspect. She shivered, thinking how unsettling it would be to have a weirdo like that fixated on you.

Long ago, she had observed that wicked living often showed on a person’s face. Sicknesses of the soul frequently manifested themselves in dull eyes, muddy skin, bloated features, sluggish mannerisms, and even a rank body smell. Good old Ron had them all.

But apparently, he didn’t feel the same revulsion to-ward her that she did for him. The moment they stepped out of the darkness and into the light, he caught a good look at her and smiled from ear to ear, in spite of his circumstances.

“Wait a minute!” he cried. “You’re not a cop!”

“I never said I was,” she replied.

“I’ve seen you before! You’re a famous model!” Savannah cut a quick look at Dirk, who was instantly alert “Oh?” she said. “You’ve seen my pictures?”

Tumblety looked mildly confused for a moment Then he said, “Uh, yeah. Some swimsuit pictures, I think. You looked really nice.”

“And when did you see my pictures?” Savannah asked, forcing a dimpled smile.

“Not too long ago.”

“I’ll bet it was pretty darned recently,” she said, giving Dirk another pointed look. “Since I just started modeling.”

Tumblety’s dead eyes cut back and forth between Savannah and Dirk. “Huh? What do you mean?”

“What she means,” Dirk said, taking him by the arm and propelling him toward the interview room down the hall, “is that you and I have got a lot of talking to do, amigo.”

Savannah watched them disappear into the tiny room that was hardly more than a cubicle. Then she hurried into the adjoining room, which was as cozy as a telephone booth with all the ambience of a broom closet. But the room’s big attraction was that she could see everything going on next door through a one-way mirror. And she could eavesdrop by listening to the speaker installed there for that purpose.

“The first thing you get to do,” Dirk was saying as he pushed Tumblety down onto a chair and shoved him up to the table, “is explain to me where you were and what you did yesterday. And don’t leave nothing out, ’cause remember, I’ve got witnesses.”

Dirk uncuffed Tumblety’s left hand and manacled his right one to a leg of his chair.

“Talk to me,” Dirk said, “and don’t lie either. If you lie, I’ll know, and I’ll get really pissed.”

“Maybe I oughta have a lawyer.” Tumblety flexed his wrist against the handcuff and winced at the pain it caused him.

Dirk shrugged. “You’re not under arrest. We’re just havin’ a little chat here. But if you’ve done something you shouldn’t have and need yourself a lawyer...”

“I told you before, I ain’t done nothing.”

“That’s not what the witnesses said.”

“What witnesses? There wasn’t nobody watching nothing I did yesterday.”

Dirk glanced over at the mirror and grinned. “They saw you gawking at those models by the hot tub. You were told to stay away from those girls. What do you think those restraining orders are for... for you to wipe your nose on? Huh?”

“I wasn’t watching those girls. And didn’t nobody see me do it neither.”

Dirk leaned over him, practically breathing down the neck of his sweatshirt. “That’s not what a certain husband and wife say. They told me that they looked out the second-story window of their beach house, and they saw you acting suspiciously. They called 911, and we came out there, but I guess we just missed you.”

“I wasn’t peeping!” Tumblety said, trying to stand. Dirk pushed him back down onto the chair. “I was just walking by that fence on my way to the beach. Since when is it against the law to walk down to the beach?”

“Don’t yank my chain, dude,” Dirk said, pacing behind his chair. “You were watching those models from behind that fence, watching them and playing pocket pool.”

Savannah stifled a laugh from the other side of the glass. Dirk was taking stabs in the dark with this guy, but Dirk had been on the job long enough to make accurate blind jabs.

Along with her delight in watching Dirk in action, she couldn’t help feeling more than a little creepy to think that this guy had been spying on her and the others... not to mention pulling his taffy while he was peeping.

It made her feel like she needed delousing.

“So, you followed one of the girls from her house to the shoot. And after you watched the girls, you decided to follow one of them from that location, too. Didn’t you?” Dirk said.

Savannah held her breath. It was another bluff on Dirk’s part, but she could easily follow his train of thought. This jerk had been watching them at the photo shot, then Tesla Montoya—who had felt threatened enough by this guy to get a restraining order against him—had disappeared within the next few hours. Not a bad bit of logic.

And from the look on Ronald Dirty-Old-Man Tumblety’s face, she thought Dirk might have hit the bull’s-eye.

“I didn’t have nothing to do with that!” Tumblety cried. “I wasn’t the one who grabbed her! It wasn’t me!”

Savannah was pretty sure her heart skipped a couple of beats, then started pounding somewhere up in her throat. She took a step closer and laid her hand on the glass.

She could tell by the set of Dirk’s jaw that he was holding tight reins on his own emotions.

He walked around to the other side of the table to face Tumblety. Placing both of his big hands on the table, he leaned toward his suspect.

“Then let me tell you, buddy,” he said, “if you didn’t grab her, you’d better tell me right now who did, ’cause you’re about five seconds away from getting arrested for kidnapping, assault, and murder.”

“Murder?” Tumblety looked up at Dirk with shock and genuine horror in his eyes. “She’s dead? He killed her?”

“He, who?”

“The guy who grabbed her. I don’t know his name. I saw... I saw...”

He gulped and wiped the sweat off his forehead with his free hand. “I was following her, okay... like you said. But I didn’t take her. She was driving down Johnson Avenue and stopped at a coffee shop there on the corner of Johnson and Charles Street. When she got out of that little black Mitsubishi of hers, a van pulled up next to her, and its side door opened.”